Kinsey, a closeted bi/homosexual who was credited with creating "a sexual revolution" and "professionalizing" the field of sexology and sex education, claimed that all American laws against sex offenses were symptoms of "hysteria," and Hefner agreed. Hefner said he would become "Kinsey's pamphleteer," and in December 1953 he launched Playboy to serve as Kinsey's colorful populist tract.
In 1954 Congress launched an investigation into the corruption of famous "philanthropic" foundations, especially the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. But when the time came to examine Rockefeller grantee Alfred Kinsey, he and his sex study were declared off limits. Kinsey was protected by a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans, who appar- ently wanted to end the "hysteria" against the sexual revolution.
Perhaps, when thinking of hysterical women, Kinsey and Hefner and their followers had someone like me in mind. Indeed, nearly thirty years later, as Principal Investigator for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) studies on pornography under President Ronald Reagan, I faced bipartisan political interference similar to what happened in 1954.
In 1983 DOJ and FBI experts were given the task, under the authority of President Reagan, to research and correlate all pornography data with violent crime. DOJ police specialist Robert O. Heck organized a blue ribbon FBI/DOJ task force to build on my theory and findings that Playboy and Kinsey were causal forces in the growing child sexual abuse pandemic.
From July 11-15, 1983, our 23-member task force, which included heads of state police, medical examiners, and academics, as well as Roger Depue (chief of the FBI's Behavior Science Department) and his world-famous serial murder trackers, met at the Sam Houston State University Criminal Justice Center in Huntsville, Texas. Our coalition would bring the full weight of the US criminal justice system in support of investigation into sexology and mainstream pornography. From our mission statement:
The effect that pornography and sexology may have upon societal violence in general and juvenile exploitation and abuse in particular opens up a major criminal justice activity arena that appears to require immediate concern and a great deal of coordination in the development of programs that should provide national criminal justice assistance across the criminal justice spectrum.
As we set to work, my veteran FBI and DOJ colleagues were unaware that we were now Code Red among powerful pornography/pedophile politicos. Our plans were threatening to them because we were investigating
pornography and its relationship/linkage to child abuse, sexual exploitation, delinquency, and societal violence [and we were creating a] validated data base concerned with missing, murdered, and exploited juveniles and young adults . . . [and] victims from pornographic, abusive, sexually exploited and violent behavior. . . . [We would also launch] legal research and review of existing state and federal laws and practices regarding child abuse and sexual exploitation.
Our coalition's work included formation of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a "centralized data information center and crime analysis system" that could collect erotic media (pornography, sexology) associated with any crime.
On November 8, 1983, our task force met at FBI Quantico (Virginia) headquarters to brief legislators and other criminal justice professionals. I gave a three-hour slide presentation on "Pornography and Its Influence on Societal Violence and Child Exploitation." Among other things, my presentation demonstrated that deliberate child sexual images were planted in Playboy and Penthouse. The lecture was recorded for subsequent FBI agent training purposes.
At the same meeting, Captain Tom Johnson and Officer Nick Battaglia of the San Jose, California Police Department spoke on "Street Products of Child/Adult Pornography and Prostitution." They were followed by University of Pennsylvania expert Dr. Ann Burgess on "Child Abuse and Pornography - its Influence on Juveniles and Juvenile Delinquency." Depue and his Supervisory Special Agent, Robert Ressler, ended the meeting with "A Criminal Justice Response."
These high-powered law-enforcement veterans recognized mainstream pornography and sexology as primary causal agents in sex crimes. Indeed, directly after the briefing, the FBI Academy store discontinued its sales of Playboy and Penthouse.
But congressional forces killed our original task force, and then convened three hearings to discredit any further data on the harms of mainstream pornography. Why? In 1990, during legal discovery, I found out that the Kinsey Institute and Playboy were both directly involved in arranging congressional and media attacks on my research.
They were not alone. Bantam Books executive Heather Florence, Chairman of the Freedom to Read Committee of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), wrote to Congress condemning our pornography study: "The more than 300 publisher-members of our Association, whose publishing houses account for well over three-fourths of books, educational materials and software published in this country," feared that my findings would "spill over into proposed strictures on legitimate publishing areas protected under the First Amendment" (letter to Congressman Ike Andrews [D-NC], July 30, 1984).
In effect, the AAP had chosen to censor any evidence of the role of its members, including Playboy and Penthouse, in advocating sexual crimes against children and women, such as the (cropped) image below, which is from Playboy, November 1971. The caption for this full and naked image of an alleged 6-to-8-year-old read, "BABY DOLL. It's easy to feel paternalistic toward the cuddly type above. Naturally, she digs forceful father figures, so come on strong, Big Daddy. (Photography by J. Frederick Smith.)"
Our data predicted in 1983 that unless the public was alerted immediately to the threat of "soft" pornography, we would soon see "harder" and more violent pornography emerging, especially sadistic child pornography. We also predicted that the number of copycat sex crimes against women and children would soar.
If Washington politicos had not spiked our task force in 1983, would we be where we are today? Would President Obama have nominated David Ogden, a Big Pornography lawyer, to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States? Would the Senate have voted (by a margin of 65 to 28!) to confirm him?
So here we are: No law enforcement or child protection agency collects adult pornography as criminal evidence. The sexually liberated "paradise" of Kinsey and Hefner has spread like the plague. The number of virgin college students has dwindled, and millions of people have been lied to all their lives about sex and pornography. The "hysteria" has mostly vanished, and our government seems to prefer it that way.